Date and roasted nut bites

Makes about twenty. Fifteen minutes, no oven.

You will need: 300g soft dates, pitted; 150g roasted mixed nuts; 2 tablespoons sesame seeds or desiccated coconut; a pinch of salt. Cardamom or cinnamon if you like.

If the dates are dry rather than soft, soak them in warm water for ten minutes and pat them properly dry. Wet dates make a paste that will not hold its shape.

Put the nuts in a food processor and pulse until they are coarse, not powdered. You want texture; a bite that is uniformly smooth is dull. Tip half out and keep it aside.

Add the dates and the salt to the remaining nuts in the processor and run it until the mixture climbs the sides and forms a rough ball. This takes longer than you expect, around two minutes, and it will look wrong before it looks right.

Fold the reserved chopped nuts back in by hand along with any spice. Roll into walnut-sized balls, pressing firmly, then roll each in sesame seeds or coconut.

Chill for thirty minutes to firm up. They keep in a sealed container in the fridge for a week, or three months in the freezer.

Two notes. If the mixture is too dry to hold, add one more date rather than water; if it is too wet, add nuts rather than flour. And taste before you roll: dates vary enormously in sweetness, and a pinch of salt does more to balance them than any amount of extra spice.

These are a genuinely useful thing to have in the fridge during Ramadan, and they travel in a lunchbox without turning into a problem.